The Sonic is my daughter's ride to High School. LJ is an honor student and cheerleader at Our Lady of the Hills High School in Kerrville, Texas. I just couldn’t leave her car stock. LJ’s is a bit worried about her Sonic and has asked John Buttermore to be careful with her car.
The Sonic headed to the OUSCI is almost stock. We have lowered and corner weighted her on Pedders GMPP Xa coilovers. Reducing the factory understeer is important for an event that includes road course and autocross. Using rear coils that are much higher in rate than our street Xa kit does just that. The Buttermore Brace and the overall structural integrity of the Sonic create a great platform so it is no surprise that the Sonic responded exceptionally well to the suspension upgrades. We're running SRF brake fluid with Carbotech front XP 8 pads with stock rotors, rear drums and shoes.
Our best modification is our driver John Buttermore.
Chevy Sonic Engineer John Buttermore Repeats SCCA National Championship
by Steve Burns on September 25, 2012
Back in May we told you about John Buttermore, the Lead Development Engineer on the Chevy Sonic program who also just happens to be the defending SCCA Touring 1 National Champion. Now make that the 2 –time defending National Champion. Buttermore recently piloted his Corvette to his 2nd consecutive Touring 1 National Championship during the SCCA runoffs at Road America.
The black number 52 Corvette in its Hoosier/Carbotech/Stoptech livery started on the pole, lead every lap around the 4 mile 14-turn track, and won by 21.611 seconds. En route to the victory, Buttermore, from Wixom, MI, beat out the 2007 National Champ, Andrew Aquilante, who was behind the wheel of a Mustang Boss 302. Third place went to Tim Hund in a Dodge Viper. Prior to winning his titles, Buttermore claimed second and third place honors at the runoffs.
Buttermore averaged 99.505mph while leading all 13 laps over the Corvette-heavy field.
Reflecting on his win Buttermore said “It was pretty smooth…Everything went according to the plan that we had. We wanted to get out and see if we could break the draft and get away…I ran four or five laps at 100 percent and then put it back to 90 percent and cruised with it.”
Congrats John!
At the OUSCI we'll be up against the best and fastest street cars in North America. Mark Stielow and his new 850 HP ultra light weight custom built Camaro, Danny Popp (last year's OUSCI Champion,) in the Lingenfelter L/28 and Raymond's Performance Camaro are going to be very strong. John and I decided taking a Sonic with razor knife handling to a thermonuclear fight.
Anyone care to place a wager on how close we come to the 600+ RWHP Camaros we have been dialing in all season long?